9.1 God Is Love
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
God is Love (1 John 4:8). You can be aware of this short statement and acknowledge it as a concept, but it will have very little effect on your life unless you live every moment as if you are embedded inside a Personal LOVE. And you cannot live inside of Love unless you know Love.
I have no interest in giving you a mental knowledge of the love of God. My hope is to cause you to KNOW that God-Love is the only One in whom you have ever lived, and God-Love is the only One who has ever directed your path. I know you do not always believe that.
Knowing Love. But how do we know love? As a human you want to be loved more than you realize. And you hope to love others, even though you sometimes think the opposite. But how do you know love, especially such a thing as God-Love?
That is an easy question to answer. Let me first give you the three critical love verses of the gospel. These are from the NKJ. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16). – This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends (John 15:12-13).
Where Is Love? But then, here is the stunner, the verse that takes all this costly Love and places it in the one place it must be to count for you. – Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has {already} been poured out [shed abroad – KJV] in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:5).
Where is the only place you will ever find this God-Love? – Poured out in and shed abroad from your own heart. You will know God-Love in no other place.
John said that you do not know what you are. It is my hope, by the end of this short chapter, to cause you to know, not just God-Love towards you and in you, but much more, that your entire life has been and is one thing only – God-Love through you towards others.
One Thing Only. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us.
There is one thing only that could ever get you to step out from your own false story of confusion, abuse, and separation from God. That one thing begins with your seeing another human being, a person just like yourself in all ways, yet one who lives in and by God-Love only, laying down his life, with all his heart, just for you. You see, that is the required assumption of Jesus’ own intentions, that if you, dear reader, were the only person in the universe lost inside of sin and death, Jesus would have willingly laid down His life just for you.
The Loudest Words. But seeing another human laying down his life for you cannot be enough to convince you to live always inside that same love. You must also know that you were, literally and substantially, in person, there INSIDE that same Jesus through every step. Until you KNOW that you were, you do not know Paul’s gospel or Paul’s Jesus.
Here is the evidence, the words Jesus spoke before He ever rose to His feet the first time in Gethsemane, as heard by Isaiah and referenced by the writer of Hebrews. “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me” (Hebrews 2:13). These are the loudest words in the universe, all here now and Personal inside of you. Jesus Himself testifies that you were with Him, inside of Him all the way through.
One Picture of God. But think about the implication of these two sets of words. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. – Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. Jesus could just as easily have said, “Greater God is no one than this…” The truth is, if it isn’t God, it isn’t love.
God IS invisible. Yet He has given us ONE picture of Himself by which ALONE we are to know Him, a moving picture. That one picture of God is the human Jesus, from the moment He entered Gethsemane, around 3 AM, until the moment He showed Himself to His disciples, having returned from placing His Blood upon the Mercy Seat in the presence of God, around 60 hours later. That 60-hour walk of the Atonement is God made visible.
God-Visible. Here is the beginning of God-Visible. – And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Luke 22:44).
And here is the description of God-Visible. – He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:3-4).
Here is the definition of God-Visible. [Love – Father] covers all [for all], believes all [for all], hopes all [for all], carries all [for all] (1 Corinthians 13:7).
And here is the reality of God-Visible. Here am I AND THE CHILDREN whom You have given Me. – You were there entirely inside of God-Visible.
Human Kindness. But what is God Visible??? – A human being confined by all the limitation of being human and weak.
God in His form is all here now and Personal in every place. God in His power is the All-Carrying One who turns all things meant for evil towards goodness, who calls those things that “be not” as they ARE. God in His essence and quality is Love. But God in His appearance, in His outward expression, is a human, limited in all ways by the form He created us to be.
Now, the walk of the Atonement, God made visible, was, in part, a means to an end. The end result of God made visible can be found in one expression only – human kindness.
The Expression of God. Here is the everlasting expression of God-Visible. – And be kind with one another, tender-hearted, forgiving [giving favor to] each other, in exactly the same way that God inside of Christ gave favor freely to you. Therefore, be like God, as beloved children and walk inside of love, in just the same way that Christ also loved us and gave Himself to us for our sakes, an offering and a sacrifice to God, into a sweet-smelling aroma (Ephesians 4:32-5:2).
Yet there is an enemy in your own mind against such a reality of God-Love made visible inside of creation. You see, you know two “Gods” and two “Christs.” The “God” and the “Christ” of your human intellect are always opposed to the true God and the true Jesus who live only in your heart.
A False Image. To understand the false image of God, we must return to Genesis 3. There is an absurd idea, floating around and stuck in people’s minds, that the serpent wanted to “be like God.” If the serpent had wanted to be like God, God would have been thrilled, for God is love. In fact, God not only made us as humans just like Himself, but He commands us at the heart of the gospel to be just like God.
What the serpent wanted was to be himself the “likeness” of God, that is, the image through which everyone must look in order to “see God.” And an unthankful Adam willfully agreed. And thus the highest of heavenly beings, all outward lights and perfections, has set himself as “what God looks like” in the darkened human mind.
Limited by Your Limitations. And so, the “Christ” many hold in their minds, in opposition to the Jesus they already know in their hearts, is a “Christ” who is beyond limitation, a superior, even an arrogant “Christ.”
I hope to write a second book, a companion to this one, in which I will do my best to expose and to root out that seed of the evil one planted all through the field of Christianity. I hope to title that next book – Let My People Go. The only thing I want to do here, however, is to connect you utterly and forever with the Jesus who lives in your heart.
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. There is only ONE image of God, a MAN, limited by your limitations, carrying you all the way through death into life.
Placed above All. And having been found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself {He acted just like God}, having become submitted unto death, that is, the cross. Therefore, also, God highly exalted Him and favored Him with the name above every name… (Philippians 2:8-9). And thus it is this ONE image of God, a Human, limiting Himself by your limitations and laying down His life for you, that God has placed above all as the only God-Visible there is.
This is the same Jesus who lives now inside your heart.
I have placed you, now, inside of God Love as Father IS. Next, I want to take you through the passage of a God of Travail sharing His Heart with you into your being the very Mercy Seat of God in practice towards all.